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The Girls go on a road trip to Hong Kong and China!

One day Annie said ” who wants to come with me and play golf in China?” Why not said the intrepid few, and so here we are! We arrived in Hong Kong and hit the town, first stop for Peking Duck, wow was it good! So after eating our full, we decamped to the top of an office building for drinks and desserts and a wonderful of view of Hong Kong Island, the peak and Kowloon!

Some ordered coffee ( boring) some sake, some decadent cake and one even Two portions of Ice Cream!

I have once made Peking duck once and that was many years ago. I started out by getting two car jacks and balancing a broom handle between the two. And then hanging a duck on the broom handle and painted the duck daily for several days with a glaze. I was following a Chinese recipe that told me to do this for several days. The family were not unduly impressed. Since then I have found many recipes that let you make your own Peking Duck in a fraction of the time.

Peking Ducks were originally a black feathered type of duck, but this has fallen out of favour for the white feathered variety.

Traditionally the ducks are free range for 45 days and then are force fed for about three weeks. Once slaughtered they are washed and then air is forced between the skin and the meat, to separate the two. They are then hung and the ducks are then painted with a sugar/honey/maltose/soy mixture before being cooked. A special oven was developed for cooking the ducks, so that they are hung during the cooking process , this was created by the Imperial Palaces during the Qing dynasty and has since been adopted by the Quanjude restaurant chain.

For the home cook, simply make sure that the duck is roasted on a rack, so that the fat can drain away and for the skin to become really crisp.

The other thing that was very interesting in this Peking Duck restaurant was the noodle maker. As a demonstration, a chef appeared and whirled around a lump of Chinese noodle paste which in no time at all became noodles! Very impressive!

After a day of Golf at the Hong Hong Golf club, we decided to go down market and eat like the locals. So we went to a noodle bar. We sat at tables for four and at my table one chose noodles with goose, her all time comfort food, whilst the three westerners chose, crispy fried/roast pork, fried shrimp with egg sauce and noodles with seafood. All were absolutely delicious, the shrimp were very crisp and the noodles spicy and cleansing! Would eat either of them again. The next instalment will be from Mission Hills in China.